I am once again taking shimelle’s Learn Something New Everyday class this month. This is my 3rd year doing it and my first lesson learned was
“Lowered Expectations are not Necessarily a Bad Thing”
I’m not going to do a layout of a lesson every day. It’s never happened and probably it never will. My priorities and lifestyle do not allow for a layout a day, even if I give myself all of October to complete those layouts. I can just about pull it off for Journal Your Christmas but that is more focused than LSNED.
I’m not going to do a photo a day of the lessons I learned. Should the lessons coincide with a photo, great, bonus for me, but I am already 249 days into my 365 Photo project and after 3 years of 365 projects I am perilously close to burnt out on photos (see next lesson) so I am going to be low key on taking even more photos.
I am going to journal every lesson.
In a notebook.
I know. How low tech can you be?
It’s not even decorated or doodled in. It’s just the $1 notepad on my desk by my computer.
But I write constantly in it, all day long. To do lists, to call lists, random thoughts, ideas for layouts, ideas for posts, things I want to buy, books I want to read. Adding the lesson I learned & my thoughts on it is easy, intuitive and what I have been doing for 3 years anyway. This year I decided to take the pressure off of creating & publishing it. It’s in the notebook. Good enough.
Many will make good blog posts, like this one, some will have accompanying photos, some many even become layouts. And I can merge all of them into a photo book when I feel motivated to do so.
My next lesson was
“There is Such a Thing as Too Many Photos”
Really. There is. I know this is heresy to scrapbookers but after spending a weekend editing and backing up 6 months of photos it is clear I take too damn many pictures.
Part of it is understandable, the urge to document is strong; the need to take multiple shots so you can pick the ‘best one’; with a DSLR there is the need to adjust your exposure & aperture & take a variety of shots with different ones, especially if you are learning about these things; there is the ease of holding the button down and firing off multiple shots with no effort. Then there is the 365 project which is not to TAKE one photo a day but to CHOOSE one photo a day to represent your day. You can take dozens that day if you feel like it, then pick the best, which is what I have had a tendency to do.
The rest of it is just overkill in my mind. I’ve had my D40 almost two years now. Taking 20 shots of the same thing at various angles is a bad habit I let myself get into & I am breaking it now. If I can’t get a clear decent shot in 4-5 snaps (and the vast majority of my photos are candid shots), maybe I’m just not meant to get that shot & just how many photos of my 7 year old on a swing do I actually need?
Just because I can take a kajillion photos doesn’t mean I *should*.
DH & the demons went camping this weekend. They did not ask about & I did not give them a camera to take with them. Failure to document one camping trip is not the end of the world.
Though I admit my hands are a bit shaky when I think about it. What if Havoc goes fishing & catches a snake? That would be such a great photo for a layout. What if Mayhem gets stuck up in a tree? There will be NO evidence of it. I need a photo for a blog post about it.
Photography withdrawal.
It’s a sad thing
